Wednesday, June 7, 2017

We must forget how to count

Most Holy Trinity
2017

Once a year we
dust off the Holy Trinity, have a look at it and then put it back on the shelf.
Perhaps, we even tell ourselves. “Okay, next year, if I have the time, I will
try to give it a closer look.” The mental gymnastics of trying to make three,
square with one is just too demanding and off-putting. But asking, why three
persons and not just one, may tantamount to asking “why is the sky so high”?
Notice that we Christians have four gospels, not just one. One might have thought
that we could have stopped with one, saying to ourselves, “Let’s just go with
Matthew (for example).” But no, an effusive, ubiquitous and
overflowing-with-love God requires at least four gospels to talk about God and
Christ. So, merely speaking of God in a one-dimensional way would certainly be
presenting an impoverished idea of God.

One of the church
fathers said, “When we talk about the Trinity, we must forget how to count.” He
was simply recognising that, at first glance, the Trinity is a mathematical
impossibility. After all, how can one equal three? We must throw away our math,
not because the Trinity is a logical muddle, but because we need a different
kind of logic. It took St Augustine, fifteen books to try to think about it,
because God is God and we are not. Because God comes to us with a complexity
and effusiveness, an ubiquity and a plenitude that boggle our modest minds; it
is no wonder that we have trouble thinking about God. No wonder the Trinity
boggles our imaginations too.I am sure
that is probably the right way to put it. The problem with the Trinity is not
that this is a bunch of nonsense, but that God is God, and in God’s
particularly glorious, mysterious and effusive way, we the creatures and the
recipients of a love so deep, cannot find words to describe it. When we think
about the Trinity, we must forget how to count.

I guess we can
move pass the mental block of talking about so lofty an idea as the Trinity by
not starting to think of the Trinity as some incomprehensible doctrine of the
Church, though the mystery of God would always be beyond our comprehension.
Think of the Trinity as our earnest, though somehow groping, attempt to put
into words what has been revealed to us of the overflowing love of God.
Christians are not those who believe in some amorphous, vague and abstract
concept of God. Christians believe in a highly personal, interactive God who
has chosen to reveal Himself to us as the Trinity. Christians are those who
believe that God is best addressed as God the Father, God the Son, and God the
Holy Spirit, all three are One, and we do so not because of mere speculation,
but because this very God had intentionally revealed Himself to us in this
manner. Christians don’t have to keep going back to the drawing table to come
up with a new version of a deity that fits his personal taste. Any such deity
would not truly be God, but an abstraction of our minds, made in our image and
likeness. No! Christianity does not present a speculative idea of God but a God
who has fully revealed Himself and now expects us to relate to Him and worship
Him as Three Persons in One.

It is true that
when God came to us in the flesh, in the person of the Son, the Incarnate Word,
God did not say, “Call me by my proper name, ‘Trinity.’” You don’t have to be
challenged by skeptics to survey the Bible to come to the conclusion that the
word “Trinity” can be found nowhere in the pages therein. Coming from someone
who has read the Bible, many times, I can only say that they are right! The
word “Trinity” does not appear at all. The reason is simple. God didn’t have
to. We did. That is, on the basis of our experience of God as complex,
ubiquitous and overflowing with love as the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit, all three attested to in many verses in the Bible, we just naturally
started speaking of God as Trinity. The Bible didn’t have to use the word
“Trinity” but the Bible certainly spoke of God as three persons.

Early on in his
massive treatise on the Most Holy Trinity, St Augustine, the great Doctor of
the West, had seven statements about God that could summarise his entire work.
The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. The Son is not the
Father. The Father is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Son. And
then, after these six statements, he adds one more: There is only one God.

In other words,
Christians are not tritheists, we do not believe in three Gods as the Mormons
do. Neither do Christians subscribe to some form of modalism – One God who
appears in different forms, assumes different avatars, or wear different hats.
The oneness of God is crucial to our faith. Not just as a concept but because
it points to the way in which we are called to live. We are called to be one as
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one. Each has their own distinct
role in the godhead. So within the unity we also see diversity. As Christians
who worship one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are called to reflect
their life to the world. So the divisions in the church are not just a sin,
they are a sin against the nature of God.

The Trinity lives
in a perfect community of love and we are called to grow together in love. Thus,
the call to live in community is the call to reflect the love of God in whose
image we are made. Love cannot be just an abstraction or a word. Love must
always have its object. There must always be something or someone to love. It
was not enough for the Trinity to exist alone as a community of love,
sufficient unto itself. So it was out of love that the world was created in all
its wonder and diversity. And it was love that called man out of nothingness
and placed him as the crown of creation, granting him the very spark of
divinity, the ability to freely choose whether to accept that love or to reject
it. Love is part of our DNA.

God the Holy
Trinity didn’t create the world like a wind up clock and set it on its way,
whilst watching from a distance. God continues to love and to involve Himself
in creation, with and sometimes despite our help. God is constantly reaching
out to the world, drawing it to Himself. This was the mission of Christ and
continues to be the mission of the Church. A Church that doesn’t reach out,
that does not draw in, is not a church formed by the effusive Trinity.
Likewise, a Christian who doesn’t want, in love, to go out and tell somebody is
not one who is formed by the relentlessly reaching out and drawing in that is
the Trinity. Each of us too, as members of that Church, have a fundamental
duty, which is in our very nature, our very DNA, to reach out to others and
draw them into the communion with Christ, and through Christ, into communion
with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This is mission of evangelisation.

Thank God that our
relationship with God is not dependent upon us taking the initiative. The Trinity
refuses to leave it all up to us. In Jesus Christ, through the promptings of
the Holy Spirit, in the wonder of creation that bears the permanent imprint of
the Father Creator, the Trinity keeps reaching toward us, keeps leaving hints
for us, indications that we live every moment of our lives upheld by a living,
resourceful and ever out-reaching God. If we are to be true to our calling as
Christians we also need to learn more about the Trinity. Not just once a year
on Trinity Sunday, but in a way that infuses the whole of our faith; so that
our lives reflect the life of the Trinity, so that it affects the way we live
as Christians. The Fathers of the Church were right when they told us to stop
counting. Yes, when we think about the Trinity, we must forget how to count –
we must remember to start loving.

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About Me

A priest of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Parish Priest of Church of Jesus Caritas, Kepong and Administrator of Chapel of Kristus Aman, Taman Tun Dr Ismail, KL.
Ecclesiastical Assistant and Chaplain for the Catholic Lawyers Society